Sunday, October 15, 2017

Wear the wedding garment!

May
my words be in the Name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity: Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

There
are three categories of people in our Gospel reading today. The first
are those ungrateful subjects who refuse their king’s lawful
command that they should attend the wedding banquet. Some simply
ignore his invitation and go about their daily business, treating his
command with wilful disrespect; others go further and treat the
king’s messengers with violence. And terrible is the fate that they
bring down upon their heads because of their wickedness – they are
destroyed and their city is burned.

The
Holy Tradition of our Church has always been clear as to the
interpretation as to who these people stand for. In the context of
our Lord’s time, they stand for those who reject him and his
teachings, and therefore reject both the Father who sent him and his
will for the children he created. And Holy Scripture, as we well
know, speaks to all ages; so we must consider as well the context of
the age in which we ourselves live and what it means for us. This
means we must consider the words of our Lord as being a prophetic
warning to those who reject him, the Truth of his Gospel, and the
Church which he established. No one should desire to be counted among
those of this first category. For the destruction of which he speaks
in his parable is, of course, eternal.

Moving
to the next category, the king in the parable sends his servants into
the streets to invite new guests. And so they do. And they are not
discriminating. Good and bad alike are invited to the wedding
banquet. And so the hall is filled. But it is not enough to simply
accept the invitation, as what happens next shows when the king
challenges the man who has come not wearing a wedding garment. This
man is bound hand and foot and cast into the outer darkness, where
there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

What
does all this mean? Again, the interpretation has always been clear.
God invites all into his Church. But it is not enough to simply enter
in and pay lip service when it comes to following his commandments.
For as Christ says elsewhere there will be many who say 'Lord, Lord',
claiming that they have been faithful followers of his, who will be
told that he never knew them and they must depart into that outer
darkness. They may never have formally rejected the Truth of the
Gospel, but they have done so in the manner of their living. They may
have come to the feast; but they never put upon themselves the
wedding garment of obedience. It is not enough to say you believe, or
even to actually believe, if that belief is not followed by action. A
Christian is not someone who makes a formal intellectual acceptance
of God's Truth; a Christian is someone who puts that truth into
practice, whatever the cost.

For
what is the point of belief if it is not backed up with practice?
Let us consider some of the commandments. We say we believe that the
Lord is God and we will worship nothing and no one other than him –
and yet we will give work, sporting activities, and social events
priority above the practice of our faith. We say that we believe that
we must keep the Lord’s Day holy – and yet churches are near
empty while the day that is his is treated as if it were simply
another Saturday. We say that we believe in prayer – yet how many
will actually pray even once during the course of a day, much less
attempt to engage in the ceaseless prayer that we are called to by
Scripture? We say the words ‘thou shalt not commit adultery’ -
but how many will then follow that commandment by practising the
sexual purity, both in mind and in body, that have always been part
of the teaching that Christ gave to the Church he founded? And so on.

These
practices are the wedding garment spoken of in the parable – the
humble obedience to God’s law and the good deeds that follow from
that obedience. Failure to clothe yourself in it leads, as we have
noted, to being cast out. And it is not a category that any should
wish to find themselves among.

But
humbling oneself and putting the wedding garment on, and wearing it
always, leads to the eternal life that is represented by the wedding
banquet. Those who are invited in and allowed to remain are those who
have clad themselves thusly, the practice of their faith bringing
them to the everlasting wedding feast of the Lamb that takes place in
heaven. These are the third and final category of the three I spoke
of as being mentioned in the parable. And it is this last category
that I hope and pray all here will numbered among on the Great and
Terrible Day of the Lord when all shall be judged. Even as I hope
that all here will pray likewise for me, in the Name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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About Me

Hi, I'm Paddy (the Rev Patrick G. Burke), a priest in the Church of Ireland. The title of the blog is from a description of me in a letter my grandmother wrote to my mother in 1965 when I was three! May God richly bless you and those whom you love today and everyday. Amen.